The Third Sunday of Lent
March 8, 2015
Click here to listen to this
homily (mp3 file)
Every
year on this Third Sunday of Lent, the Church gives us the story of the Woman at
the Well. For a very good reason. We are right in the midst of our Lenten
journey: some among us are preparing for the waters of Baptism which will flow
over them just a month from now. The rest of us are preparing to renew our
Baptismal commitment: to stand once again as we will on Easter and publicly own
that Jesus is for us the way, the truth and the life.
In many ways, the story of the woman at the well is a
Baptism story: it's the story of a woman who discovers the deepest thirst
of her life, deeper by far than the thirst for water. It's the story of a
woman whose life is aimless and empty until she meets Jesus – really meets him –
encounters him in a way that reveals her emptiness and his fullness. And then,
everything changes: she turns her life over to him decisively, almost
recklessly.
The Church hopes we will see something of ourselves in
the Samaritan woman. That may seem a bit far-fetched at first, but it
really isn't if we zero in on the heart of the story. Look at this
woman all by herself at the village well under the blazing midday sun.
There's a loneliness about her -- a sad isolation. She doesn’t belong.
And one thing’s for sure: she's not popular in her village. If she were
she would have been drawing her water with the rest of the women of the village
in the cool of the early morning. No, she's out of step, this woman.
Her life is out-of-order. She has lost touch with her own goodness and has found
herself running from one dissatisfying relationship to another, and not one of
them has brought her peace or happiness.
And then, Jesus happens along and challenges her to
take a new look at the thirsts of her life -- to stop running, to stop living on
the surface, to stop drinking from wells that promise to satisfy (and may seem
at first to satisfy), but which in the end only increase her thirst. He
challenges her to turn from all of this and to begin drawing water from a well
that gives "living water," to use his expression: "Water welling up from within
to eternal life."
Jesus challenges us to the same, my friends. We
are really not all that different from the Samaritan woman. Our lives can get
pretty unfocused, pretty scattered, pretty out-of-order, I know mine can.
Often our lives lack a center of quiet, peace and calm. Too often there is an
almost frantic quality about them. Maybe we don't run from one relationship to
another as the woman did (although that’s possible), but "run" we surely do. We
run from our promises, from our commitments, from our best instincts. We run
from our responsibilities. We run from ourselves, too –- from facing the truth
about ourselves, and sometimes we even run from God. We run and we thirst, and
today, happily, Jesus let us run right into him – like the Samaritan woman did.
And in doing so, we find life, hope, truth, refreshment, the end of our longing.
We find water unlike any other water – living water, the only water that can
really satisfy all our thirsts.
My friends in Christ, the Samaritan woman, after many
attempts at love, found in Jesus one love: one single, satisfying, faithful love
deeper than any of the shallow loves she had settled for previously. And we can
find the same. Or, even better, he’s the one who finds us! He always
finds us if we let him, and sometimes he finds us when we’re running away from
him. And always, always, he loves us, and he invites us to come to the
table of the Eucharist, and says to us, "Whoever drinks the water I give will
never again be thirsty."
Father Michael G. Ryan
